The Open Door Summer '96

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The Genesee Country, Western New York and the World

by Corrin Strong, Publisher

Nothing is quite as certain as change, and with this issue Genesee Country has jumped with both feet into the Brave New World of cyberpublishing. Our cover story on "25 Great Summer Getaways" that begins on page 29 is also being published simultaneously on the World Wide Web. For those of you who are Internet savvy, you can find it at: http//www.clarioncall.com/getaway.html

One of the inherent advantages of web publishing is that the material can be accessed instantaneously, at any time, anywhere in the world. It is our hope that this new site will encourage visitors from around the planet to visit the Genesee Country in person to experience the real thing.

Our clarioncall site has been operational since early March, and we've already put up a great deal of information. Each of our 15 back issues has its own web page with an annotated table of contents, and a complete index of the over 200 articles we've published to date can also be downloaded.
You can also check the Web to see which back issues are out of print, (at this point most of Vol. I, and Vol. II No. 1), and we've begun to put selected articles from those early issues online in our Greatest Hits section.

The web site also has information for potential contributors including our guidelines for writers, photographers and artists. If you still need more information, you can always e-mail us at clarion@clarioncall.com.

In order to increase interest and traffic to our site, we have started a weekly Web Hunt contest. Every Friday at 7 p.m. a new question is posted online. The first person to e-mail us the correct answer, (which can always be found somewhere on our site), is the winner. Current prize is a $15 gift certificate to The Big Tree Inn in Geneseo.

Finally, we have launched a non-commercial listing of people online with connections to the Genesee Country. No matter where in the world you live, if you are interested in western New York, and have an e-mail address or a web page, drop us a note and we will list you and provide a free link to your site in Genesee Country Connections.

Please include a short (25 words or less) description of your personal connection to the area. (We do reserve the right to limit business listings to current or future customers of Clarion Publications.)
Another change regular readers may notice is a further expansion of our coverage area as shown by the map below. We have added three more counties (Schuyler, Chemung and Chautauqua) to complete our coverage of western New York.

I'm afraid that all of this change has brought on a bit of an identity crisis for the magazine. As we push out beyond our beloved Genesee Valley and into cyberspace, we find that the concept of the Genesee Country becomes increasingly obscure. Although we feel we are historically accurate in including most of western New York under this umbrella, modern usage is otherwise.

For some time, we have been discussing whether a name change for the magazine might more accurately reflect our coverage and help our circulation. Of course, we would never attempt anything so radical without first getting reader input.

Please let us know how you feel about this, and if you have a suggestion for a better name, we'd love to hear it!

Editor's note: We have already received a number of responses to this call for comment. They can be reviewed in our GC Forum, or you can add your own comments through our guestbook.